


Lepanto (Torturous)

by krynon



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Captivity, Disturbing Themes, Flashbacks, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Torture, Hurt Tony, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Possible Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krynon/pseuds/krynon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Or: I am The Light and This is The Machine)</p><p>He makes the decision, the final choice, on day four hundred.<br/>This is it.<br/>This is fucking <em>it</em>.<br/>He pulls to his feet, wrenches himself to his toes and stands.<br/>He almost buckles, but that's beside the point.<br/>Fuck fate. Fuck it and the light and <em>fuck submission</em>.<br/>"<em>I will not be fucking ruled.</em>"<br/>...<br/>Photons tap on his ribs in endless symphony as the light strums the harp of his vocal chords.<br/>It is day four hundred and this is everything.</p><p>Title from 'Lepanto', by G. K Chesterton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lepanto

**Author's Note:**

> Extremely graphic depictions of violence and torture! There's a lot of content here that could be triggering, including suicide references and implications. This is VERY dark, please be wary of it!

 

 

> “Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
> 
> Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
> 
> Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
> 
> The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
> 
> The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
> 
> That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
> 
> In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
> 
> Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.”

 

G. K.Chesterton, Lepanto.

 

 

And Loki pours the water into his mouth, trachea, windpipe, lungs, and laughs.

And Tony, choking on liquid in his head and mouth and lungs and heart and limbs (and in everything else, as well), laughs too.

He's done this before.

 (Him, seeing the pool for the first time after Afghanistan and choking himself into a fit.)

(Him in his first shower, flailing and slamming his hands on the floor.)

(The first time he tries to work on a car, the memory of the battery forcing his hands to rip at his chest.)

(The dancing light reflecting off the pool disorientates him, and soon he's tripping and as the water floods his lungs he doesn't even struggle-)

 

...

 

It doesn't scare him anymore.

 He chokes as more water cascades out of nothing into his consciousness, but he doesn't know if it’s the liquid making him splutter, or the laughter itself.

Nothing scares him anymore, and he chokes out his laughs because of that.

 

He's in Afghanistan again. Water in his lungs as the machinery begins to freeze up from cold, desert night temperatures. His screams barrage the walls in his head, since he can't get them out through his mouth anymore.

Yinsen, across the room, stands by and looks like he wants to help.

 

(Yinsen had nearly nothing and his life, so his life was worth more than anything. Tony had everything and a sham of a life, so his 'everything' was infinitely preferable to his 'sham'.)

(He finds out that Yinsen's family is gone. He had exactly nothing and the tattered clothes on his back.)

(Tony wonders what that makes his sham.)

 

Water in his ears and eyes and lungs and blood and nose and everywhere.

It's strange how water burns like fire, and yet the fire they apply to his torso never drowns quite like water.

Water smothers.

Fire _consumes._

It starts on his ribs, following the newly implanted curve of his skin around the machine pumping his heart and tracing the outline of shrapnel.

The skin blisters and buckles but does not burn, not like the term implied: the flesh he had left was red and raw, pinkish and even painfully white in some areas, but none was the black and dark brown he had expected.

And it hurts, but he stops screaming.

His throat hurts, hurts like someone has put a torch to it- they haven't- and his eyes are as abrasive as the sand in which they are all encased.

Water burns in his chest, and as they pour more in, he splutters and retches away.

Fire rips at him, tearing at his flesh and eyes and eventually his mouth and tongue.

He is a burn victim, now.

On top of the torture and water and drowning, he's a _fucking burn victim._

_(It'll heal, he tells himself. But right now the marks are bright red and sore, weeping and bleeding at the slightest provocation.)_

 

Loki doesn't know about the fire. He has only water and pressure and this chair. He can even move his arms, for fucks sake.

This is nothing.

Muscles twitch in remembered ruin and he trembles and shudders with rolls of laughter.

This is nothing.

Loki rips at him and snarls as he notices that his mirth is shared.

This is nothing.

His hair is ripped out and the arc reactor shakes in its metal case, his body rolling and burning and twisting as it battles mirth and pain instinctively and together. The cold of the ice demon comes then, and he laughs harder.

_THIS IS NOTHING._

It's a desert, and though he doesn't notice it at first, he eventually asks Yinsen about it. The cold. What was that creeping into his bones? Torture side-effects? Old age?

Death?

Yinsen had smiled at him and simply explained that it got very cold at nights.

Eventually, he stops trying to massage in warmth to his scarred and burnt and partially nerve-deadened limbs, and let's the cold set in.

He loses most muscle control in his feet past the first month, so instead of walking he begins hobbling around like a child.

 

This ice does not settle into him. Loki grabs a hold of his face, and the cold sears up his skin and begins to char his face. Eventually it is so cold the nerves die, and he cannot feel the laughter as it leaves his tongue anymore.

(He misses Pepper, even though she didn't love him,)

(He misses Rhodey, even though Rhodey has bigger and better things to sort out now,)

(He misses the Avengers, even though they didn't really need him,)

(He misses captors that could torture him into submission, because right now he can't even trap himself in the pain-)

 

Loki, on the eighth day, sits in front of him on a high backed chair and Tony smiles up at him savagely.

"How long have you been here?" Comes a scratching voice filled with madness and poison and venom. (It's a test. If he can remember how much time has passed, he can remember far too much.)

"Eight days, four hours, twelve minutes, fourty three seconds. Fourty four. Fourty five. Fourty six."

Loki stands, drags icy, sharp hands up his torso- (he leaves bloody welts at least an inch deep, and Tony bites back a grin) and then walks away.

Darkness.

 

Welts on his chest from ice and burning magic. The white of his eyes fill with blood. Loki takes his sight from him.

 

He leaves the Afghani cave, and it takes nothing as powerful as a god to take that away. The sun removes his vision well enough.

 

The feeling comes back to his mouth, and his lips shriek in pain as he laughs. Tony notices, as the laughter begins to hurt but not abate, that Loki's eyes are not naturally blue. They look like Clint's eyes, from before.

 

Twenty days in, Loki removes the front of his tongue, slicing and using his bare hands to reach inside and _rip._

It's new.

Loki still hasn't electrocuted or successfully killed him yet. He'd had to be resuscitated before, in Afghanistan. He bleeds from his mouth, and chokes on it. The salt and iron make him gag.

_This is nothing._

Loki regrows his tongue using acid green magic.

 

(Yinsen restarts his heart and looks like he's actually concerned for Tony as a person. He almost wishes for death, because that isn't fair.)

 

Loki rips it out again that morning.

 

He notices that Loki tends to rip his tongue out when he laughs. He laughs more, and laughs harder afterward.

 

He chokes on his own blood, but his electric heart keeps him breathing, and Christ knows how.

 

When Loki regrows his fingers after they are burnt to ash (he had almost resigned himself to it, not creating or really being useful ever again), he knows that they are not coming for him.

The Avengers meant a lot to him- they had expanded his world from three to several billion.

Huh.

That day, when he laughs at Loki ripping out nerve cells individually, he does so a bit rougher and a bit less defiant.

Even the paragon of America has given up on him now.

 

Days drip away, and so does he.

He is there for fourty days before he realises that he has lost track of seconds.

He continues to laugh, and rounds up his numbers instead.

 

Once, Loki burns out his eyes. He considers that that might be worse than Afghanistan or Stane. (Worse than months of endlessness-) (Worse than your for-all-purpose father ripping your heart out of your chest?)

 

"You're very good at suffering, mortal. I wonder if anybody else knows."

Tony laughs.

_This is nothing._

For a while, silence and pain and his own contorted snarls of laughter are everything.

The worst moment is on day fifty. Loki pours water down his open and sore throat, and-

He's not in Afghanistan.

He's still there.

He's drowning and panting and dying, but-

He's still there.

There's not Yinsen or cold floor or overwhelming guilt. There is only this and Loki and the ties that keep his hand together as he perches on a backless stool.

 

At seventy three days (and four hours, and twelve or thirteen minutes), the floor begins to fall away, the intense and penetrative blackness giving away to bright white light. He wonders if his mind supplies the light to warn him death is near.

If it is, he's disappointed. He hadn't ever thought there was an afterlife, and had always figured that if there was one, he was going straight downwards.

It's just another time he's been proved wrong.

The fact that Tony's right about the time it takes for him to give in to torture makes him laugh.

("You honestly think you can keep up with a trained soldier, two trained assassins, a god and a goddamn fuckin' rage monster?"

Tony smirked back at Fury. "No. I think I can beat 'em." He'd beaten all the simulations. _He kicked the living shit out of the simulations._ He wonders if Fury didn't believe him because Tony'd built them in the first place.)

 

Loki burns his eyes out again before he can contemplate it any more.

They are regrown and unseeing, vision clearing slower as usual, before Tony speaks again.

"Resorting to old tricks now, horn-head?"

Loki rips his tongue out before he can continue.

He doesn't find out any more about the floor falling away.

 

Seventy five days (and 6 hours and maybe thirty or thirty five minutes) in, he's moved. Loki picks him up and drags him by his neck to somewhere new.

As he sniggers gently, mouth twisted and mangled but smiling nonetheless, he swears he can feel a warm breeze.

He can't.

He reminds himself that this is nothing and continues to drag and make this as hard as possible for Loki.

 

He wonders how he hasn't died from malnutrition yet.

This is nothing.

 

(It's getting really hard to count minutes.)

 

They don't come. His tongue grows back slower than usual. He chokes as one of his teeth grazes it, and blood floods into his dry mouth.

 

This is NOTHING.

 

Loki leaves on the eightieth day.

 

Silence. He sleeps, or something closer to it than full consciousness, in the dark, and laughs to himself occasionally. It's that or madness. If he's choosing to talk to himself, that's better than not realising there's nobody else there.

(When he tries to talk to Loki, the god goes straight for his heart. He stops bothering to talk, most of the time, after the 'light-floor' incident.)

 

There is nobody else.

This is nothing.

This is nothing.

This is nothing.

 

When Loki gets back, ninety days, seven hours, and anywhere between twelve and fourty minutes later, Tony tells him exactly that, and recites his mantra verbally for the first time.

"I have learned new tricks, puny mortal."

Tony spits at him, and coughs out a laugh through damaged lungs. "This is nothing," he says. "You are nothing."

Loki grins, and the sickly sheen of the arc reactor casts shadows on his rictus face.

The god reaches down and tears it out of his chest.

He can still move his arms to scrabble at his hole-where-a-heart-should-be.

"This is _everything,"_ Snarls Loki.

When the arc reactor is back in his chest and the shrapnel stops moving, Tony smiles widely as his muscles jump back and forth under his skin. Loki does not refasten the invisible ties on his arms and wrists.

"There will always be worse."

Loki rips out his tongue again, and his laughter is shrill and burning.

 

He starts thinking of it like a test.

The only tests he'd ever failed before were psych eval ones. He's not going to let that change now.

 

95 days and nights in, he still only laughs. Loki leaves again.

The darkness he leaves behind is no less terrifying than the torture.

 

One hundred and six days in, Loki returns. He sits in the high backed chair (red and proud, golden and silver in places- he's had plenty of time to study it from afar, he knows it is no earth metal, and he no longer laughs at the chairs use of his colours) and takes out a Stark Pocket Projector. He clicks a button, and the air around his humble stool is filled with images.

 

He notices absently as he watches Stane rip his heart out; he watches palladium destroy him; he watches the nuke footage; his back is finally beginning to hurt from lack of support.

Tony laughs as he wonders how magic has managed to keep him not-dead. (Loki blinds him again, and he laughs at that too. Old news.)

 

Loki leaves again, the blackened halls closing in around him as his newly healed eyes refuse to shut.

 

One hundred and twelve days in, and Loki returns with the projector.

It shows him his weapons destroying millions of lives. His laugh that day is bitter, but there. Loki seems at a loss for what to do, so he rips at his heart's casing and watches him squirm before he leaves again.

 

One hundred and thirteen and Loki shows him Yinsen's death.

And well, Tony's replayed that enough times that it doesn't break him.

 

(This is not nothing.)

 

One hundred and fifteen, Loki leaves.

One hundred and twenty and he thinks he might be failing the test.

One hundred and twenty five and he wonders if the bots are okay without him.

One hundred and twenty six, he wonders if anyone has found out quite how sentient JARVIS is.

One hundred and thirty he wonders if he'll live to say sorry to Pepper for ruining her life.

One hundred and thirty five and he stops laughing.

 

 

One hundred and thirty seven and he starts again.

One hundred and fourty and he watches Loki return through the black.

 

"How do you fare in the dark, mortal?"

 

Tony is suddenly aware of the creeping things in the darkness, and recalls the SHIELD files telling him that Loki fell through the dark. He wonders if he's going mad too.

Loki leaves.

 

One hundred and fifty, and Loki has gone and the beasts are advancing so he cries. The tears burn his new eyes.

 

One hundred and fifty two and the intermittent crying has done him no good, so he stops.

 

One hundred and fifty five, and he tries to rip the arc reactor out of his own chest because the beasts and the moving is right behind him. For the first time since he arrived, his hands are truly restricted. They lie clenched together behind his back.

 

They reach him on day one hundred and fifty seven.

Their teeth tear into his face and their claws rip his skin to ribbons.

There is not much left of him on day one hundred and sixty, parts of his face torn away completely. His calves and thighs have been prised away from the bone.

Loki heals him on day one hundred and sixty two, then leaves.

The beasts advance again and he feels it.

His first incoherent thought is: _fuck no please leave me alone please please no please no no no no no_

The only thing he has as they tear into him and his eyes water without permission is to scream the minutes and seconds away.

"One hundred and seventy, eleven hours, four min-aaaah!"

"One hundred and- ah- seventy two, four hours, sev-auugh!"

_"One hundred and seventy fucking six, six hours please stop-"_

_"ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY NINE PLEASE NO EIGHT HOURS NO-"_

One hundred and ninety. Loki must have left his healing magic in the air. It sifts through his cells and let's him breathe, knits through him and prevents his death.

 When Loki returns on day two hundred, his skin falls off to the touch, and the god brings a StarkPhone.

Tony stares up at him, and recognises that Loki hadn't seen him shriek pain at the heavens. He does not correct Loki's assumption that he hasn't yet given in, if only slightly.

He wonders if his eyes are a different colour now they've been destroyed so many times.

Cold, long fingers hold out the machine to his ear, and then when it connects, to the sky, clicking the speaker button.

"Hello? Tony?" Her soft and comforting voice is abrasive on new ears. He doesn't think he's heard anything but snarling in a very long time. "Tony, is this you?! Are you okay, where've you been? Where _are you Tony, we can't find you-"_

The god's smile glints down at him. He bites back the urge to laugh. He doesn't know why he's being kept alive but he knows he can not-break for a while longer.

"Pepper, I-"

Loki gives the beasts the forward call, and he has just enough time to speak before the closest creature rips out his vocal chords.

"Oh, Pepper, I'm so sorry-"

It doesn't sound like his voice, as he screams.

 

Two hundred and one (four hours later) and the torture has stopped and the only noise is Pepper's quiet sobbing through the phone.

"It's okay, Pepperpot, it's okay, I'm fine-"

His voice is filled with blood as his tongue grazes his teeth.

Pepper goes silent at the sound and then composes herself.

Loki still smiles down at him.

"We will find you Tony."

"No, you won't." He smiles bitterly back. And then the beasts advance again, and Loki hurls the phone into their midst.

 

He hopes that Pepper is okay.

He hopes Rhodey is okay.

He hopes Bruce is okay.

He hopes Clint and Natasha and Thor and Steve are okay.

 

When Tony wakes up from the strange pained stupor he'd fallen into on day two hundred and four, (it's day two hundred and five and six hours, he'd retained his ability to count this long and he won't lose it now) Loki is there with another StarkPhone. This one has the face-to-face app activated.

Steve is there, all sweaty and angry, like he's just been to the gym.

The good captain stares with wide eyes and cannot seem to form words.

"Hey, cap." Again, his new tongue catches on his teeth and blood floods from his lips. "Sorry for everything."

Loki's smile as he calls in the beasts that time is gleeful.

"Tony-!"

Loki pauses and turns to the man on the screen, fingers raised just enough that the beasts advance but don't come.

"I'm afraid Mr.Stark is..." A creature jumps on his back and rips out some muscle in his neck. He screams, but laughs through it. Loki smirks, and turns back to the screen. "A little _indisposed,_ Captain Rogers. Please do call again later."

 

He wonders, on day two hundred and six, if Steve thought he'd gone mad.

 

On day two hundred and ten, Loki doesn't even torture him. He just sits in his high-backed chair, and Tony can almost fool himself that they are simply two liars in a room.

He holds out the phone, and it's Rhodey. The projector shows him War Machine shot out of the sky. Rhodey just listens to the silence, and Tony just breathes.

 

Day two hundred and fifteen. The monsters advance again.

 

On day, two hundred and twenty, Tony asks Loki what he wants.

Loki shakes his head.

"I have my orders, Stark. I am to destroy you, so you might be easier to manipulate."

"Well," and his mouth fills with blood yet again but Tony ignores it. "How's that working out for you?"

In a smaller voice than usual, he says, "Not well," and the beasts remove half of Tony's right arm.

 

Day two hundred and thirty and maybe six or seven hours. His eyes grow back for what might be the twelfth or eighty second time and he notices cracks in the black world, and a whisper of wind.

 

Day two hundred and fourty.

The cracks stay as they are and Loki doesn't comment of them. Tony braces himself for impacts that don't come, and he goes the entire day without being tortured.

He doesn't know if it's a victory.

 

Day two hundred and fourty two.

Loki leaves his position in the high-backed hair, and the monsters loom but don't close it.

He doesn't miss Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and the Avengers anymore.

Imagine if they were in his seat? He'd have destroyed everything for them if they'd been captured. He's glad he means less to his friends than the world. Just because he was bad at being alive doesn't mean they should be.

 

Two hundred and fourty eight. Loki returns and sobs into his high-backed chair. His eyes are new again and he can't see it, but he can hear well enough.

 

Two hundred and forty nine. He hasn't laughed in a while. He tries to rectify that, but Loki rips out his throat.

 

Two hundred and fifty. Blood and sand flash before his eyes as the black begins to fall away. The light advances every time he shuts his eyes, so he keeps them open. He catches Loki staring at the light as if he were a scared animal, and breathes heavily through ripped internal organs.

He wonders why Loki's eyes are the colour they are, and chokes into a stupor.

 

Two hundred and fifty two. The light and warmth is closer. He shies away from it, scraping the chair backwards as far as he can, and ignores the metal he tastes in his mouth and the twinge of the arc reactor.

Breathe, he tells himself. No, says his lungs. He doesn't quite pass out from lack of oxygen, because Loki's presence means he's always conscious.

 

Two hundred and sixty. Loki leaves, and places a StarkPhone on the high-backed chair before he goes. He rips out Tony's throat again as he walks past, and backwards, into the beasts and blackness Tony can't see.

 

Two hundred and sixty three. Tony doesn't like being alone and not-busy. Before, where he'd been able to think about how to escape, even if he couldn't move his legs, it had helped. Now he stares at the white and wonders if his eyes will cope.

 

Two hundred and sixty eight. The phone rings, and he wonders how the caller had a phone that could contact outside of a dimension without magic. His throat bleeds him into submission, so he doesn't answer. He's almost glad.

 

Two hundred and sixty nine. The phone keeps ringing. He answers with a wet shriek as a beast leans over to silence him. The shrill ring of the phone probably sounded similar to a scream, to the creatures. He doesn't know what he'd say anyway.

 

Two hundred and seventy two. The phone stops ringing.

 

Two hundred and seventy eight. The light advances in short bursts, and in his haste to get away, he flips the chair to the floor and crawls, dragging his body with his hands.

 

Two hundred and eighty four. It's illogical but his mind has started to associate the outside and the light with people he loves getting hurt. He drags himself back into the dark and argues aloud that this way is better.

 

Two hundred and ninety. It's not nothing. The phone rings and his throat has finally healed enough to answer it. A shadow stalks in front of the machine before he can, and bares its shadow teeth.

 

Two hundred and ninety two. The phone continues ringing and the shadow continues to guard.

 

Two hundred and ninety four. The phone keeps ringing.

 

Two hundred and ninety six. He's alone.

Two hundred and ninety seven. It's better he's alone.

Two hundred and ninety eight. He hates it.

Two hundred and ninety nine. He wonders if he should celebrate day three hundred.

 

Three hundred and two. He forgets.

 

Three hundred and four. The light advances so he pushes himself back towards the beasts. If he can hear people screaming on the other side of the black, then he's imagining it.

 

Three hundred and five. Scientific analysis prompts him to wait for the light to advance and cover him.

It takes it's time and strolls forward with a limp.

Three hundred and six. It burns his eyes out and he can hear Pepper and Rhodey and Steve and Bruce and Natasha and Happy and Clint and Thor scream, bright and loud and scorching in his ears.  He crawls away.

Three hundred and seven. The phone keeps ringing but the shadow creature moves. He doesn't answer and crawls back into the dark.

Three hundred and ten. He's alone.

Three hundred and eleven. He's so fucking _alone._

Three hundred and fourteen. It's okay, he tells himself. They deserve to be safe. He pushes into the darkness and tries to rip the reactor out again.

His arms aren't tied, but a beast rips them away before he can get there. His bleeding stumps clutch at his head in defeat.

Three hundred and twenty. He asks the empty silence and light if they'll be safe if he breaks. The light tells him no, so he doesn't.

Three hundred and twenty two. Eleven months approaches but the phone doesn't stop ringing. He wishes it would, and gestures frantically with new grown hands in the hope that it might help.

Three hundred and twenty five. He decides that if it rings on day three hundred and thirty, he'll answer. He'll tell them to stop calling and live, whoever they are.

Three hundred and twenty six. He doesn't scramble away from the edge of the light in time and he sobs as it touches his feet. He pulls away again, and doesn't notice how the high-backed chair is dragging backwards with him, or how the beasts cower away just as quickly.

Three hundred and twenty nine. He assures himself he will answer on day three hundred and thirty.

Three hundred and thirty. He doesn't.

Three hundred and thirty one. He asks the silence if they'll be okay if he answers. The silence says they'll die if he doesn't.

Three hundred and thirty two. He doesn't.

Three hundred and thirty four. He _can't._

Three hundred and thirty five and he doesn't want to do this anymore.

"No more," he whispers at the phone. "Please stop." The phone doesn't listen and he squirms back into the dark.

 

Three hundred and fourty. "Stop it," he tells the phone. "Make them stop, please," He implores the dark. The dark shakes it's head.

 

Three hundred and fifty. "Please, Please, Please-" It keeps ringing. "Please, please, please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-"

 

Three hundred and fifty two. "Please."

 

Three hundred and sixty. It occurs to him he's missed Christmas. He asks the dark if the phone would stop if he said it was a belated Christmas present or something. The dark says no. "Please," he asks. The phone ignores him.

 

Three hundred and sixty two. He wonders how he's gone this long without going mad, without giving in to the pain.

 

Three hundred and sixty seven. He wonders if he HAS given in to the pain and the phone was just his own broken head.

 

Three hundred and seventy. "Please stop calling me," he whispers, curled up and cowering as best he could tied to a stool.

 

There hundred and seventy two. _"Please stop calling me."_

Three hundred and seventy four. " _PLEASE STOP CALLING ME-"_

"Call accepted, rerouting through outer Archangel Network." The smooth English voice jars his ears and he cowers. "Number listed as 'Potts, 'Pepper' Virginia', currently connecting..." He breathes at the phone.

"Tony?”  The phone says.

"Pepper?”  He asks. "Pepper, please stop..."

Silence.

"Tony, we're going to get you out."

"No," he says. He sounds like a petulant child.

It is difficult to care.

"Tony, _Please."_ She sounds like she has been crying. Tired and haggard, he thinks, like something really bad has happened.  He wonders what.

"Pepper, please no..." He wonders what his own voice is like.

 

Three hundred and seventy five.

"Tony... What's going on?" He chokes on his scarred throat, but talks anyway.

He tells her about the light and the beasts and Loki, and the StarkPhone and keeping people safe, and blood and sand and water.

"This is nothing," he tells her, but that stopped being true a while ago.

"What happens when you go into the light, Tony?"

He doesn't answer.

 

Three hundred and seventy six.

"Tony, can you do something for me?" She sounds tired. He doesn't know why. He says he can, and she makes a choked noise.

"If I ask to do a video call, can you accept it?"

He shudders.

"Yes," he croaks, and he watches the ground fall away behind the high-backed chair.

"JARVIS," says Pepper, and Tony is worried again that someone has discovered how far-reaching he is and tried something. JARVIS was basically a God when he left, and Tony winces as he thinks about the things that might have happened.  "JARVIS, connect face-to-face with phone designation: 'Stark, Tony'."

The camera lights up, and he stares at it. He wonders quite how bad it is when JARVIS pauses.

"MissPotts," ventures JARVIS, dry and bland as ever and more than slightly concerned.  "Are you sure? You may not like what you see."

Tony blinks as Pepper's face appears on the screen.

"Pep," he says, and she promptly bursts out crying. She looks good, for someone who's intermittently sobbing and heaving for breath. Her hair's tied up and she's wearing a power suit, black and white, and she does look powerful for all she's sobbing.

There's a beep, and the projector makes a shrieking noise from where it's buried down the side of the high-backed chair. Pepper's face fills the space in front of him.

She looks down at him with wide eyes, and the light advances so he shuffles back.

"Oh Tony," she whispers, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

The screen widens suddenly, and there, filling the extra space, is Rhodey. His eyes widen, and he scrabbles that bit further back into the dark.

"Rhodey?"

"Oh my God, Tony!"

He looks good, too. Tired, but like he's got a purpose. Rhodey looks better than he has in a long time.

"Steve, Bruce! It's _Tony_ _!"_ Shouts Pepper or Rhodey, and he covers his ears at the volume.

Bruce and Steve join them on the screen.

He figures it out. Loki's been gone so long; his influence must be wearing off. This is a dream, and the implications of that, that he can sleep, that he can _escape-_

He laughs.

They don't laugh with him, so he stops.

"None of you are dead," he says, with the laugh still on his face.

They look at him carefully, and Rhodey says: "No."

He smiles.

"I'm glad," he breathes.

It's been about two months (sixty two days, and four hours) since the last beast got him. He feels one advancing from behind.

"I'm glad," he says again. "Look away, please."

They don't.

They're still looking when a beast goes for his neck.

It rips out his throat and eyes and removes his arms from their prison and Pepper sobs and screams, and the last thing he see's on their faces is horror. He smiles. They're okay.

 

Three hundred and seventy seven. He counts the minutes aloud so they know he's alive, but he wonders if it wouldn't be easier if they just left him. His mouth seals with blood every time he talks.

 

"Three hundred and seventy seven, eight, fifty two." Silence.

 

"Three hundred and seventy eight, six, fourty one." Silence.

 

His eyes grow back on day three hundred and seventy nine.

 

"We will get you out," One of them says on day three hundred and eighty.

"No, you won't." Pepper bursts out crying again, and Rhodey buries his face in her shoulder- he can just see it through his new eyes.

"It's alright," but Tony chokes as he say it, because his new throat is not yet healed. "I'm fine. It's payment," he smiles. "It's payment."

"What happened to you," whispers Pepper, and nobody speaks while his shoulder heals and the bite wounds close up.

"Nothing," he says weakly. "This is nothing." Tears sting his eyes, and he blinks until the still-new fragile membrane of them splits. He can't see their faces anymore.

 

Three hundred and eighty two.

He can hear their breathing.

 

Three hundred and eighty four.

He knows they're there, and in his head it registers as another reason 'not-to-scream'.

He wonders at which point his nerves started to die, and when the sensation of muscle removed from bone and bone from tendon became worse than the few sparking nerve cells it inspired.

 

Three hundred and eighty five.

The screen shows only Rhodey's face, and he smiles weakly up at it.

"Tony," begins Rhodey. He cuts over the lieutenant colonel as quickly as his abused lungs allow.

"No, Rhodey. It's okay."

"Where are you, Tony?"

Tony shakes his head and breathes gently, trying to keep his throat open and arc reactor stable in his chest.

"..." Rhodey stares at him and he stares back, darting glances at the light and dragging himself back.

"What happened to you, man?"

"This is nothing," smiles Tony. "This is nothing."

 

On day three hundred and eighty six, he wonders what this is 'nothing' compared to. He decides that this is nothing compared to their deaths, or their harm, or their suffering. He breathes a little heavier as he edges away from the light.

 

Three hundred and ninety. Bruce is alone, watching over him today.

"Why don't you want to be rescued, Tony?" He asks, in the soft, easy manner that he had when the Hulk wasn't around.

"You'll get hurt." Tony replies. It's true, he thinks. They will only get hurt. "It's payment," and a smile falls from him as he continues, "And if the beasts are here, they can't be on earth. Better for me to be here than for you all to be..." He chokes before the word settles. "Gone."

Bruce's eyes flare green as he leaves.

 

Three hundred and ninety two.

“What do the numbers mean, Tony?” Tony blinks up at Rhodey’s figure.

“Numbers?”

Rhodey frowns and doesn’t speak again.

 

Three hundred and ninety four.

Steve is the only one on screen. "Tony, what happens when you go into the light?"

His bleary eyes barely focus on the bright blue screen, but he looks past it to the burning white behind anyway.

"It burns," he says. "And you scream." He stares at the black place his feet rest, as if it is ground. "As if it were one of you here," he explains. "And not me."

Steve stares at him.

"We will get you out, Tony," and the injustice of it all hits him with a Brooklyn accent.

"No," Tony sounds broken and he's not sure how to stop. "No, please, don't."

Nobody understands, he shouts to himself. It's better if it's him. It's better if it's him, and not one of the others. This way the world got to live in place of one man. Better. He doesn't realise he'd been talking aloud until Steve echoes him.

"Better, Tony?" There's a pause, because Tony knows it's rhetorical even after a year buried in the dark. "Listen, Tony, could you do me a favour?"

He recognises that technique: using someone’s name so often. It's a thing they did with prisoners of war.

He nods anyway.

"Could you go into the light while we watch, please, Tony?"

He shakes his head and shuffles into the dark. What if they hear their own screams, he asks the dark. The dark shrugs and frowns.

"Please, Tony?" Steve's accent is thick and suffocating, and he thinks he'd rather have his vocal chords ripped out again before he hears it choke.

"Why?"

"I... We think it might help, Tony."

Tony looks at him, as deep into his pixelated blue eyes as he can.

"Help?" His voice does not sound like his own.

"Please?"

Tony cowers and nods.

"I," the breath catches in his raw throat. "I'll just wait for it to, uh, _get_ here."

It shouldn't be too hard. The light advances faster every day.

But he doesn't want to.

He honestly, clearly and blindingly doesn't.

The beasts crawl away from the light, and he wonders how long he'll have to wait before the beams settle on him.

 

 

Three hundred and ninety five and the light is a few inches from his toes. He spends the entire day staring at it, and deduces that either it's not accelerating very fast at all, all of a sudden, or it's always been slow and Tony's losing himself.

 

 

Three hundred and ninety six.

"Please, I don't... I don't-"

The stare at him sadly.

One, Steve or Rhodey, keeps his voice flat, and asks:

"What happened to you, Tony? What did they do to you?"

Tony stares at them sadly.

 

Three hundred and ninety seven. He can't.

He really can't, _physically,_ his muscles twist away from the light as if it were an innate response, as if it was always apart of him, and he can't help but cower and cringe even though he knows they're watching.

"I'm sorry," he whispers to Pepper. "I'm so sorry."

 

Three hundred and ninety eight.

Natasha stares at him. He sits with his hands curled but lax, his arms and legs spread wide- he's still not sure if he looks like he used to.

"Do you think that this is heroic, Stark? That this is helpful?"

He looks up at her with wide eyes.

"Does it matter?"

She snorts in derision.

"Of course it doesn't. It never does. But Tony, You..."

He blinks a little too hard, and the corner of one eyelid splits. It bleeds.

"This is cowardice, Tony. And Tony Stark was never a coward."

"C-Cowardice?" He chokes. "Miss Romanova," His laughs are punctuated with russet liquid spraying from his mouth. "I'm not sure you'd know cowardice if you killed it."

"Go into the light, Tony."

She stands to leave, but-

"Tell me, 'Tasha." She turns around. "Is it more cowardly to fear the dark, the future, or yourself?"

She keeps walking.

"Mr. Stark, fear is not cowardice. Acceptance of your fate is."

 

Tony thinks about Pepper and JARVIS and Rhodey and the 'bots and Happy, and about Bruce and Steve and Natasha and Clint and Thor and Phil,  and he considers Fury and Loki and the Chituari and Emil Blonski and Vanko and Justin Hammer and the Red Room and the Super Soldier Serum and the Gamma. He thinks about the Ten Rings and Yinsen, and about the Iron Man suit.

And he thinks Natasha might be right.

 

Three hundred and ninety nine.

If it is his fate to be ever-running from the light then fuck fate.

If it is fate for the others to suffer then fuck fate.

And if it is his fate to never get out? Then fuck fate.

There is nobody watching him, so he asks JARVIS.

"Jarvis-"

"Sir." Oh wow. He's waited an awfully long time to hear that.

"Hey, buddy. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"... That it has, Sir. If I may, it's very good to know you are alive."

"Thanks, J. Feeling's mutual. Do me a favour, will you?"

"Of course, sir."

Tony chokes.

"Could you show me my face, please?"

Silence.

"Are you sure, sir? It may well... Upset you."

Deep breaths, TonyStark. If you're alive at three hundred and ninety nine days you are sure as hell going to be alive for four hundred.

"Yes, Jarvis. I'm sure."

A click, a whirr, and-

 

Oh.

White skin, wasting away... The dark hair and lashes make him look ill, his eyes are mismatched though both were sickly blue (and that explained why Clint wasn't there, the memory still strong and bright), his muscles had gone, and he does not look like Tony Stark anymore.

The chest is the same though, all scarred and wrong-colour and lit up with blue energy.

 

Oh...

Tony tries to smile, but his cheeks hurt, so he laughs and submits to the agony of it all.

"I'm so sorry, sir. Really, I am."

 

 

 

He makes the decision, the final choice, on day four hundred.

This is it.

This is _fucking it._

He pulls to his feet, wrenches himself to his toes and _stands._

He almost buckles but that's beside the point.

Fuck fate. Fuck it and the light and _fuck submission._

The four that are watching him- Natasha, Bruce, Steve and Rhodey- stop their conversation.

They stare.

 

"This is fucking _it."_ Tony says.

He walks forward.

(The beasts flank him, a terrifying arrow leading to his back, but they don't stop. They just let him walk, and walk right along with him.)

Step after gruelling step-

He's pretty sure his feet bleed.

Step and stumble and scream and step and one more and he's stood on the edge-

Into the _light-_

_"I will not be fucking ruled."_

There are no screams.

Existence bursts into colour as his pupils contract for the very first time.

And he understands now that the light wasn't advancing. The darkness was falling away.

It's an _island._ Above him and below him and around him is light, glorious, yellow-white light and it consumes him. It sticks to his white lungs and his blue eyes and his dark hair and he cries.

He looks back at the darkness.

"I'm so sorry." The darkness has tears on it's face.

He looks at the screen.

"Oh, I'm so, so, sorry."

Rhodey has tears in his eyes too because Tony barely knew how to say sorry, let alone mean it; Steve looks unknowingly back like he doesn't know what this means; Bruce has no expression but his eyes are green. Natasha eyes him carefully.

"This is cowardice, Stark."

He sniffs and smiles and breathes. Sincerity pours off him and he's one step away from oblivion.

"I know."

He stares away from them into the endless sun.

"And you think this will kill you?"

"Yes."

Steve jolts and his eyes widen, Tony can tell. His limbs and nerves hurt. They haven't in an awfully long time, and feeling emotion beyond pain is as exhilarating as breathing in the light.

It is day four hundred and he is so, so tired.

"You are a coward, then?"

Tony smiles. Truly and deafeningly, he is the sun and it pumps through his veins like photons were his blood cells.

"Never."

He takes half a step, and he's ready, he's so, so ready, his old bones and his new skin-

"Stark."

Loki stands across the room.

And for the first time, Tony can see him.

Blue eyes and pale skin and hair bleached with black.

And no heart.

"Two liars in a room, Loki. Two liars in a room."

And Tony stares off into this light abyss, and Loki runs forward, but the beasts flanking Tony turn and growl-

Loki, apparently, is allowed no such easy escape as this.

The god looks up and Tony almost turns and reaches for him.

They are so very similar, but Tony is neither a coward nor a hero. Tony is not a God or an assassin or a super soldier. He is not a soldier at all.

 

So he looks back at the screen once more, where they all ignore Loki in favour of staring at him.

"All pieces in a big ol' game you see? But there's got to be an endgame, I think. I-"

Loki screams and Tony winces.

"I'm sorry, Natasha. I'm sorry, Steve. I'm sorry, Bruce. And oh god, Rhodey!"

He pauses and

He-

begins-

To-

 

"You already know how sorry I am. Tell Pepper I love her."

 

Fall-

Forward into light.

 

It plunges forward into his hair and mouth and knocks the arc out of his chest, light beads in his eyes and snaps at his heart.

He descends, ever faster into infinity, the light is following him and traps itself into his eyes and trips in his steady outstretched limbs as if they've never seen light before.

 

Sit- settle- Stark! Breathe.

 Photons tap on his ribs in endless symphony as the light strums the harp of his vocal chords.

He smiles and laughs and the light drags tears from him.

 

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Laugh.

Stop.

Shudder.

Laugh.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Stop.

Shudder.

Gasp.

Breathe.

Gasp.

Laugh.

Shudder.

Writhe.

Gasp.

Shudder.

Breathe

Shudder

Gasp

Gasp

Gasp

Gasp

Breathe

Gasp

Gasp

Gasp

Shudder

Laugh

Stop.

Start.

Stop.

 

 

Day four hundred and this is everything.

 

 


	2. Epilogue (This Day)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,  
> It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;  
> It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;  
> For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships."  
> G. K. Chesterton, 'Lepanto'.
> 
> The first epilogue.

 

Miles and miles above the head of Tony Stark, what remains of Loki rears it's head. The beasts stop and drag their heads away from limb as well as body to stare at the brightening light, and Loki stares.

Quiet sobbing drops from the phone still sat where it had been just moments before- except now that feels like a lifetime ago.

The god raises his head to stare at the blank eyed humans in the projection.

“How long was it,” He asks and still the beasts do not flinch, staring in awe at the end. “How long was he here?”

And before it can be stopped, someone says it. It couldn’t possibly be said which one of them it is, because it does not seem like anyone opens their mouth.

“Four weeks.”

Loki laughs and the noise jolts the beasts, and from raised heads and reverent staring they snap and snarl back into flesh and bone.

It could still not be said who speaks, but it is one, or all, of them.

“I’ll _kill you._ ”

"I’ll break you until there is nothing left of you but viscera and _ash-_ ”

Because they can’t get Tony’s face, his eyes, his open wounds and his bleeding eyes out of their heads-

“Four Hundred Days!” Loki _howls_ with laughter, tears and blood streaming down his face.

Someone sobs and he screeches with the hilarity of it all.

“Tony Stark was here _four hundred days.”_

The last words the mad God of Lies ever says are:

“And I thought you were meant to be heroes.”

 

And then the beasts rip his head off, and in dangerous and terrifying unanimity they race for the light and tumble as one into the end and sun.

 

It is Day Four Hundred and Loki is not sure if this was anything at all.


	3. Epilogue Two (To The Next)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,  
> And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;  
> And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring  
> Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing."  
> G. K Chesterton, 'Lepanto'.

It is not Rhodey or Pepper. They don’t do it, perhaps because once they do they would be letting go and Tony was never one who could be easily _let go_ of.

It isn’t Clint or Natasha because they are used to this kind of thing. Really, they leave it because they know they _should_ be used to this kind of thing. Sometimes your flaws should be put for everyone to see, and they are too shaken to fix it. They, both more and less than all of them, are not used to teams.

It is not Thor. Loki’s body lies still where it was killed and he cannot bring himself to draw away from the injustice.

It isn’t Bruce because Bruce adored Tony and freedom and to know he lost one and would soon lose the other is the most selfish thing he would ever be allowed.

 

It is Steve.

 

It takes a long time, but Steve does it because Tony Stark was not like anyone he’d ever met before, and he knows very little about him. Steve does it because Steve was terrified of the past.

Mostly though, Steve does it because he knows next to nothing about Tony Stark except that more than cages scared Natasha and Bruce, more than Steve fears the Past and its dead faces, more than Nick Fury feared lack of control and Phil Coulson had feared undefeatable circumstance-

Tony had feared emotion and the idea of being ruled.

Steve figures that he owes Tony that much, owes him respect.

What had he said?

“As if it were one of you,” Says Steve, aloud. “And not me.”

Steve blinks away his emotions and hunches in the chair.

“It’s day five hundred, Tony.”

Sighs and blinks and clutches and _cowers._

“I didn’t even _know_ you.”

He thinks of holes in chests, of blue eyes and ripped faces, scar tissue where there should be none and pasty white flesh and a beard ripped off his face entirely in places.

“I’m sorry, I think.”

The image of Loki’s dead body flashes off the screen and the light disappears with it.

For a long time, Steve sat, his hand on the monitor with his head bowed and his eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m really sorry.”

 

It is Day Five Hundred and Steve is moving on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Epilogue Three (We are The Last)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea  
> The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;  
> They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,  
> They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark; '  
> G. K. Chesterton, 'Lepanto'.

 

Bruce does not stay in StarkTower. He moves to the Mansion, because there is nowhere else to go. It reeks of Tony and everything screams “I’m dead!” but Bruce can’t leave.

Thinking about it, there was an awful lot he never knew about Tony- but what he did know was that he had never been fond of running away.

Bruce has decided to try it for once.

Bruce is getting better.

 

Steve stays. He stays and helps Pepper and talks to the ‘bots and JARVIS, distracting the smaller ones when they don’t understand that The Creating Unit won’t come back, when ‘Where’s Tony’ in stamped out code becomes too much for even JARVIS to bear.

That confuses Steve almost as much as it breaks his heart.

But Steve stays because he is good press and he thinks Pepper does not deserve to do it all on her own.

He thinks Tony would agree.

Steve is getting better.

 

Sometimes Thor makes connections between Tony and his brother. The arrogance, the flash, and the flair- (The broken head, the mad king, the liar-) The similarities are hard to ignore. But he notices more how hard these people, these _humans_ , are trying, and when he asks, they say:

“It’s what he’d want.”

And Thor can’t help thinking that if Tony was remembered and honoured then Loki deserved that too, and it didn’t matter (it never had) how many people cared.

As long as there was one.

Thor is getting better.

 

Natasha thinks about cowardice and the easy way out. If death was not cowardice, and emotion was honour, then what was love?

Natasha is getting better.

 

Clint looks at Natasha and smiles.

Clint is getting better.

 

Rhodey quits as Stark Liaison. He requests to never be questioned or spoken to by the press. No one really contacts him anyway; the media are interested in The Avengers and not in him.

That’s okay with him.

After all, distance _was_ a coping method.

Rhodey is getting there.

 

Pepper stares at the sun now.

She didn’t before, and of course she doesn’t do it often, but sometimes if there’s no board meeting and no important business to be done Rhodey catches her and she struggles to see without squinting.

She finds JARVIS speaks to her a little more robotically now, but whether that’s because the AI pities her or because the program is not designed to exist without Tony she’ll never know.

The idea of an ever-mourning immortal being eats at her.

Pepper Potts is not getting better.

But she is trying.

 

JARVIS is only servers but JARVIS has emotions and is still only that.

There is nothing but desperate code and endless repetition of unfinished files, broken lines of orders where he  _needs_ to address 'designation: Creating Unit' and he  _can't._

Sometimes, JARVIS almost pities his lack of ability to forget. There is absolute remembrance at all times.

But Pepper, once, grabs a coffee out of reflex and strides down to the workshop clutching paper after paper and lets herself in, only to stop abruptly when there is no music or Tony.

She looks up, the stares at the ground, then walks away.

And The Avengers, once- Captain Rogers calls an order, and so Agent Barton drops- but there is nobody there to catch him until it is nearly too late.

Sometimes, JARVIS pities them.

But mostly, all JARVIS ever feels is loss.

JARVIS cannot get better.

JARVIS never will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Epilogue Four  (I cannot stand but may I do so despite my crumbling legs)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,  
> Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,  
> Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea  
> White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.'  
> G. K. Chesterton, 'Lepanto',
> 
> If you do not fight, you cannot win.

…

Stop.

 

…

Stop.

 

…

Stop.

 

Start.

Gasp

Shudder

Gasp

Stop-START-

GASP-

SHUDDER.

_shudder shudder_

_gasp_

_**shudder gasp**  
_

_** breathe. ** _

_**** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have any questions, find me on tumblr at krynon.tumblr.com!
> 
> Thanks for reading, leave Kudos and comments if you can!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave Kudos and Comments if you've the time!


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